Love Never Subsides, Waves Last Forever

1
The moment a college girl seven years my junior confessed her feelings to me, my girlfriend was in the crowd, a quiet spectator.
We had been together for a year.
In all that time, Kathy had never shown a flicker of jealousy. She always said, with a detached sort of grace, that she believed in giving me my freedom.
I thought she was just naturally reserved, cool-headed.
That was until I stumbled upon her ex-boyfriend's old social media account.
For him, she had made a sixty-mile journey across the city every single day, rain or shine.
If he went to a party and didnt text back for a while, she would bombard him with messages. Shed get huffy, demanding he keep his distance from other women, warning him that she would be checking his chat logs.
And when they fought, when he tried to break up with her, the same woman who was always so composed with me would pin him to the sofa and kiss him with a fierce, desperate passion.
It hit me then.
She wasn't cold. She wasn't above jealousy.
Her fire, her possessiveness they just weren't for me.
I let out a slow breath and took the bouquet from the young woman's hands.
Olivias eyes lit up instantly, a fiery hope practically spilling from them. The flowers were a stunning arrangement of deep, velvety roses. Id looked them up once. Their meaning: You are my one and only obsession.
Honestly, for a split second, I was tempted to just say yes.
Ten feet away, mixed in with the crowd of onlookers, stood Kathy. Her tailored blazer and slacks were a stark contrast to the casual student attire all around her. She was holding a bouquet of her own, her serene face unreadable. She looked like a stranger who had merely paused to observe a commotion that had nothing to do with her.
A silent, bitter sigh rose in my chest.
I must have been losing my mind.
To actually consider accepting Olivias confession, just to see if I could crack that perfect, icy composure of Kathys.
The absurd thought vanished as quickly as it came.
Olivia was my professor's daughter. She had just turned eighteen.
I pressed my fingers to my temples. This is a disaster, I thought. How was I ever going to explain this to her father?
"Olivia, the flowers are beautiful, and I'll keep them. But Im sorry. I already have a girlfriend."
Olivia froze, the words tumbling out of her mouth before she could stop them. "Since when? Why haven't I ever seen her come to campus to find you? Leo, are you just saying that because you think I'm too young?"
Her three-pronged attack left me speechless. Every word was a needle, pricking the most tender, bruised part of my heart.
How could I possibly tell her that my girlfriend was standing right behind her at this very moment?
It was laughable, really. Over the past year, Kathy had constantly talked about not wanting to intrude on my world, about giving me space. Today was the first time she had ever come to the university to see me, and only after I had pleaded with her for weeks.
Kathy had clearly heard Olivia's questions, but she didn't move an inch.
Defeated, I forced a stern expression, adopting the tone of an older brother scolding his kid sister. "Hey, watch your tone. Show some respect."
"Youre barely older than my shoe size. What are you doing thinking about romance? Go back to your books."
2
The crowd dispersed like a receding tide, leaving only Kathy behind, an unmovable rock on the sand.
She was holding a cake box in one hand and that other bouquet in her right. It was a painfully generic arrangement of red roses and baby's breath, the kind of thing youd grab from a roadside stand with zero thought.
Her gaze fell on the dark roses in my arms before she spoke. "Those are beautiful. You can tell she put a lot of thought into them."
She offered the cake to me.
I deliberately didn't take it, hugging the roses tighter. "My hands are full."
"Should I hold those for you?" she asked. Her tone was gentle, considerate even.
I stared into her eyes, searching their deep, placid pools for any sign of annoyance, any flicker of the emotion a girlfriend was supposed to feel in a moment like this.
There was nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I decided to be direct. "Kathy, weren't you afraid I might have said yes to her?"
A small smile touched her lips. She answered with that same infuriating calm. "That would just mean she's more deserving than I am. I would understand."
The thread of my composure finally snapped.
"Good point," I said, my voice strained. "So, why don't we just break up?"
The words hung in the air, tasting like ash in my mouth.
Kathy was silent for a beat. "I'm sorry. Next time, I'll step in sooner."
It was another one of her well-rehearsed apologies. Just like every other time, shed quickly admit fault, shutting down the conversation and sealing off any possibility of real communication.
Last month, I had deliberately complimented a classmate in front of her, remarking on how charming she was. Kathy hadn't shown the slightest bit of displeasure. I joked, "Aren't you worried I'll fall for someone else?"
She had simply replied, "Don't overthink it. I trust you."
After being met with that same wall of indifference time and time again, I could no longer lie to myself.
Kathy didn't care about me. It was as simple, and as brutal, as that.
3
We parted on bad terms.
Or rather, I was in a bad mood. She seemed fine.
As a final act of defiance on what was supposed to be our first anniversary, I told her I was going to a bar tonight. I was sure she'd understand what I was really saying.
But all she said was, "Be safe," before turning and walking away.
When my friend Mark picked me up, he was in the middle of a heated argument with his wife over the car's Bluetooth.
He hung up and irritably sent her his location. "God, shes worse than my own mother! I can't even go out for a drink with you without getting an interrogation." He shot me a look of pure envy. "You're so lucky, man. Your girl Kathy is the best. Never interferes, never gets mad. She's completely devoted to you."
I didn't answer, just rolled down the window and let the cool night air wash over my face. A bitter pang of jealousy hit me. I envied Mark's life, the constant bickering and making up he had with his wife. Their relationship felt alive, dynamic, a flowing river where the push and pull only brought them closer.
It was the feeling of being needed, of being important to someone.
What Kathy and I had it was like a stagnant pond. Even an argument felt like a luxury we couldn't afford.
That so-called devotion was just her habit of conceding before a disagreement could even begin. Shed cut me off with an "I'm sorry" before I even had a chance to get angry.
A soft female voice drifted from the car radio, layered over a gentle melody.
"If someone is always perfectly rational and restrained with you, that isn't love. Love is irrational. It's losing control. It's overthinking, it's being lost in a daze. It's possessiveness, its a desperate need to see them..."
Mark wasn't listening, still grumbling about his wife. "We can argue about anything! Last night we were trying to figure out where to go for vacation, and it turns out we both secretly planned a surprise trip for the other. We were both so excited, talking over each other, trying to get the other to listen to our plan, and it turned into a huge fight. Can you believe that? How ridiculous is that?"
I managed a weak jab. "No wonder you're so good at arguing. You've been getting extra practice behind my back."
Mark laughed. "Yeah, well, those arguments usually end up in the bedroom. Good for the stamina, you know?"
Not long ago, I had excitedly presented Kathy with my own meticulously planned vacation itinerary. I had barely gotten a sentence out before she cut me off.
"If you like it, that's fine."
My excitement deflated like a pricked balloon. My enthusiasm vanished, and the plans were forgotten.
The night deepened, and the car pulled up in front of a bar. Before Mark could even kill the engine, I pushed him back into the driver's seat.
"Alright, you married man with a curfew, don't you dare come inside. Go home before your wife puts a hit out on me."
Mark glanced at his vibrating phone and sighed. "You're probably right. She gets lonely by herself. Fine, fine, I'll go home and continue the fight."
I smiled as I watched his car merge back into traffic.
The bar was busy but not rowdy. A singer on stage was gently strumming a guitar, his voice a husky, melancholic whisper as he sang a love song with lyrics I couldn't quite make out.
I found a secluded booth in the corner and let the alcohol numb the ache in my chest.
My phone lit up. A message from Kathy.
What time are you coming home?
It felt like a routine check-in, a task to be completed. I stared at the words for a few seconds, my thumb hovering over the screen, but I didn't reply.
Instead, I opened the social media app that had been the source of my sleepless night.
I had come across the account last week. A post about a relationship had popped up in my feed, a stark anomaly among the usual academic and research articles. Normally, I would have scrolled right past it. But a powerful, unexplainable intuition made me click.
The blogger detailed, with loving exasperation, just how clingy his girlfriend was.
I clicked on his profile and saw that he had stopped posting about a year and a half ago. In the comments of his last post, someone asked what had happened.
He replied: We broke up.
The replies were filled with sympathy and regret.
I felt a pang of sadness for him, too.
Until I saw a blurry photo of a woman in profile. I recognized her instantly. It was Kathy.
My mind immediately rejected the idea. It was absurd. This couldn't be Kathy.
The Kathy I knew was cool, rational, as emotionally steady as a finely tuned instrument. She didn't get excited about promotions, and she could calmly disarm a knife-wielding patient in the ER without batting an eye. She never crossed boundaries, never lost control.
But the Kathy in these posts?
She was the girl who would travel sixty miles across the city every day just to have dinner with him.
She was the girl who, if he was slow to reply to a text, would send a hundred more, demanding he cut off all contact with other women and submit his phone for inspection.
Even when they were breaking up, he had written a post so long it was practically a novella. Her last message to him read: "Please don't say we're breaking up, I can't take it. Don't move, stay home, I'm bringing you your favorite food."
She had even gotten on her knees, with tears in her eyes, and begged him not to leave.
That kind of desperate pleading, that burning, all-consuming possessiveness
I had never seen that side of her.
By the time the sun began to rise, I had read every single post.
My phone screen timed out, reflecting my own tear-streaked face.
Their love had been a raging inferno, so bright and hot it was painful to look at.
And in that moment, I finally understood.
I had thought Kathy was giving me space and respect.
The truth was, she just didn't care enough to do otherwise.
4
Yesterday, the blogger had posted an update. He said he was meeting his ex-girlfriend.
I waited quietly.
I decided to give her one last chance.
If she told me the truth about her past, or if she kept it from me but didn't go to meet him, then I would sit her down and have an honest conversation. I wouldn't let our relationship end with unspoken regrets.
Because I really did love her.
Kathy was beautiful, a fantastic cook, and always pulled her weight with chores. We were both in the medical field, so we had so much in common. I knew it would be hard to find someone like her again.
My eyes were glued to the entrance of the bar.
With every swing of the door, my heart leaped into my throat.
Plenty of people came and went, but I never saw her familiar silhouette. The knot of tension in my stomach slowly began to unwind. I even felt a small sense of relief.
Maybe I was just overthinking everything.
Maybe that part of her past was truly over.
Perhaps she had simply burned through all her passion in that one all-consuming love affair, leaving nothing but embers for me.
Love doesn't have to be a whirlwind romance. It can be a slow, steady stream.
Like my parents.
When my dad was in the kitchen cooking noodles, just as he dropped them into the pot, my mom would wordlessly appear with two washed eggs. She didn't need to ask; she just knew he always liked a soft-boiled egg with his noodles.
When my mom peeled garlic, shed instinctively drop the skins onto a paper towel my dad had laid out for her moments before.
The rhythmic chop of the knife and the hum of the exhaust fan would fill the silence, a comfortable quiet that felt more intimate than any conversation. Two people, one home, a lifetime of shared meals. Maybe a life like that wouldn't be so bad.
The clock on the wall ticked past two in the morning. The bar was about to close.
Kathys internal clock was unshakable. She was always asleep by 11:30 PM.
It seemed she had chosen to say nothing and stay home.
Good.
I let out a long, slow breath and picked up my phone, ready to call a ride-share and head home. Tomorrow, we would talk.
Just as I stood up, my gaze drifted to a dimly lit corner near the front of the bar.
I froze.
The blood in my veins turned to ice.
Kathy.
She was sitting right there, her eyes locked on the male singer on stage. Her profile was sharp and clear in the flickering lights, yet she looked like a complete stranger.
Their gazes met across the crowded room, and both of their eyes were red with unshed tears.
She had been here even longer than I had.
She hadn't gone home. She hadn't gone to sleep.
The quiet, steady future I had just started to build in my mind
In that instant, it shattered into a million pieces.
5
A wave of pain washed over me, but it was quickly eclipsed by a feeling of utter absurdity.
I quickly wiped the moisture from the corner of my eye.
Taking a deep breath, I told myself I couldn't run.
There was no need to wait for tomorrow. We would talk right now.
I walked straight toward her, planting myself directly in her line of sight and breaking their intense connection. "Kathy."
Her red-rimmed eyes still held the lingering ghost of a powerful emotion she hadn't had time to conceal.
"What are you doing here?!"
Just then, a drunk woman at the next table staggered to her feet. She let out a wolf whistle at the singer on stage and hurled an empty beer bottle in his direction.
Glass exploded across the stage.
The singer flinched back, a shard of glass catching the hem of his pants.
In a heartbeat, Kathy shoved me aside and threw herself in front of him.
I stumbled, caught off balance. My elbow slammed hard against the cold edge of the bar, and a sharp, blinding pain shot up my arm.
My mind flashed back to the day we first met. Kathy had shielded me just like this, without a moment's hesitation, from a psychiatric patient with a knife.
But now, the only person she wanted to protect was the man standing behind her.
The drunk woman, seeing shed caused trouble, muttered a curse and stumbled away.
"Julian!" Kathys voice was tight with worry and fear. "I told you not to work in a place like this! What would you have done if I wasn't here?"
Julian, still shaken, finally snapped back to reality and pushed her away forcefully. "I don't need you to look after me! Why are you so damn pathetic?"
They stared each other down, a silent battle raging between them, their eyes tangled in a web of history that no one else could understand. But Kathy's desperate longing to pull him into her arms was so palpable it was almost a physical force in the room.
It was laughable. I was the one who felt like the outsider.
"What is he to you?" I asked, my voice cutting through their standoff.
Julians head snapped toward me, tears glistening at the corners of his eyes. He tried to sound composed.
"We're just old friends."
Just old friends. Right.
Kathy's jaw was clenched so tightly a muscle jumped. She looked like she was choking on the words, unable to refute his definition of their relationship.
Her gaze finally returned to me. "His leg is bleeding. I have to take him to the hospital."
She could spot a nearly invisible scratch on his leg in the dim, flashing lights of the bar.
But she was blind to the agony twisting my face as I clutched my elbow, a cold sweat breaking out on my forehead.
Julian turned his face away. "I'm not going! I'm not gonna die!"
Kathy immediately pulled out her phone. "Then I'm calling an ambulance."
She was a doctor.
She was Dr. Kathy Moran, who could face the most gruesome injuries in the emergency room without flinching, making life-or-death decisions with ice-cold precision.
But right now, for him, she was a complete mess.

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